Main menu

Milos Jerabek Interview

Quick interview with Director Milos Jerabeck on Ranked Battles taken during the WGL Grand Finals. From the Polish site Gamezilla:

As a tank player I first have to ask, how many battles do are you at?

Milos: At the moment I’m at around 14,000 victories. So between 50-51%

I wanted to ask you, what will be the next big thing that you add to WoT? At the conference you spilled that there will be a ranked battle ladder. Tell us more about it.

What we lack at the moment is an endgame. Something for players who have already reached Tier X. Our Director, Thaine Lyman, says that their Tier X tanks are like Ferraris in the garage. You probably won’t want to purchase something like that, because your lower tier does better for you. Ranked Battles will hopefully make you want to leave that garage.

The new mode is only for Tier X, and the best players have come to this level. The system will be seasonal, and the first test will be June on the European server. That season will be composed of four sections lasting a week.

Each week will be divided into five ranks, demonstrating the players skill. To earn points to advance you need to be among the the top 12 players on the winning team or top 3 on the losing team.

We understand that sometimes a player can have a great game, and that despite their skills their team may still lose. This player should be rewarded. On the other hand, sometimes you are on the winning team but were only a burden to your teammates. In this situation you don’t do well, and you don’t gain a point. Collecting points are what gets you into higher teams.

The new mode will bring a new currency- bonds. What can you get with these?

The first thing is improved equipment, the second is directives. The equipment is what you already know in game, but better, more effective. Of course we tried to keep some sort of balance with that. Directives are similar to Personal Reserves, but assigned to specific tanks.

Are these able to be used outside of Ranked Battles?

Yes, you’ll be able to use them in all modes: Random Battles, Clan Wars, or Strongholds.

Are you planning on expanding Ranked Battles to lower tiers?

At the moment we are focusing on Tier X. Never say never though, and we certainly talked about it amongst ourselves, but it’s definitely not something we’re looking to introduce in the near future.

Another big change that was recently introduced was the change to artillery. Now SPGs fire more often, but with weaker damage and the ability to stun crew. How have these changes affected people’s willingness to play arty?

We new in advance that you can’t look into data from the first two days. It was like a shock wave. I think each player then decided to to jump into SPGs and see what they could do with them. At the moment the data is showing artillery being used about as much as it was before the update. Only slightly lower than before.

Prior to that, playing artillery was very much more talk than play. Now with the accelerated loading, increased accuracy, and the splash area it’s more likely that you can influence a battle, even with doing less direct damage.

Have you seen changes in the average amount of XP gained by players in SPGs?

This is monitored all the time. There are differences, but part of this stems from the fact that players need to learn to play artillery again under the new mechanics. Update 9.18 was only the beginning of the work. We’ll observe the data and make adjustments on the fly.

Another major novelty is the matchmaking system. Before the interview I read on the forum that some players were seeing battles of 13 v 13. How is that possible?

Things like that happened during the first days of the update. At the time a lot of players were trying the light tanks and artillery, do to the fact that these changed a lot. The game tried to create matches with ideal parameters. The best arrangement was the 3-5-7 arrangement, though the matchmaker also takes into account the vehicle types. Sometimes though, in order to get that ideal distribution you have to wait to long. In those situations the system will reduce expectations for the match. The very last option for the matchmaker is to reduce the total number of players. Those situations should not happen now.

Lets go back to the same system, in Random Battles the matchmaking doesn’t take into account the skill of players?

No, I definitely don’t want to introduce such an option now.

Will you see how Ranked Battles go to decide on the matter?

This is not the end of skill based matchmaking, or of ranks. Depending on your results you will be promoted to higher ranks or falling into lower ones. Then you hit matches with people of the same rank. Everyone will be in the new season starting from scratch. The first battle will determine who will go up and who will fall in rank.

I’ve asked this to WG employees before, but you understand I have to do it again. What about Polish tanks? Has anything changed?

As soon as I saw the Polish press interviews on the list, I knew that this question wouldn’t miss me. Our historians collect all the data and projects, and people from balance and gameplay are considering all of the options. I don’t have any specifics at the moment, but you should keep track of the news and wait.

“The new mode is only for Tier X, and the best players have come to this level.” It is an interesting concept, but there is validity to the idea that you are just going to give unfair advantages to strong players when they load up their T67s and Matildas with super-premium upgrades and consumables and go seal-clubbing.

One possible solution would be to split lower-tier battles, 1 through 9 into two queues. Queue A would only allow players who have never achieved a tier 10 tank. Queue B would only allow players that have achieved tier 10. That way, the new players who are grinding up would have someplace free of seal-clubbers with or without super-premium upgrades.

Exactly. Already this statspadding in low tiers ( 1-3 ) cost WG a lot of STAYING new players. Not the amount of people who try is important, but those who stay. Now wait, until all those stats addicted whill have equipped their t 10 tanks… and see the t127 with this rubbish in low tiers running around. the new equip should be restricted to T 10 only..but NO… of course not. I know a lot of people, who quitted playing because the got all time slaughtered in low tiers. WG obviously lost all interest in the normal playerbase, those people, who made WG what it is now. Most of us players are around 47 and 50%. Even with a t10 not we would make much less of this new bonds. so why not making a league of those super dooper players. let them play with eachother. why do they need to slaughter around and ruin the game and the playerbase for most of the people. realy disappointing that all

Shame to see that they are still moving forward with the whole improved equipment and directives thing, though I suppose there can’t be any changes or backtracks until actual data comes through after the season starts.

I’m still of the opinion that this all would’ve been much more popular, and less controversial if the reward at the end of the season was some kind of unique and awesome camo or emblem (maybe credits too), because as everyone knows that above all, good players love to stunt on people, and they want people to know who’s stunting on them. That was the whole idea behind gold guns in games like Call of Duty and Overwatch. I don’t know, just a thought from someone who doesn’t even have a tier X to use in ranked battle mode 😛

Considering the equipment for bonds I still cant shake the feeling like top arena gear in World of Warcraft where you simply had to have rather good rating, earn arena points ect. … far had to be better than most and this was your reward not everyone could achieve. Dont know how it is now since its few years back already but I still dont see it that strange. Hell, I wouldnt even bother for something as ugly as gold tank and hated that already in CoD (next level should been golden chain around neck and tattoo on forehand for even better nigga-effect)

Please take context into account – meaning the previous question. He was talking about the equipment and directives. And yes, idiotically, they can and will be used outside of ranked battles. (And well, to be precise, they don’t really make any sense in ranked battles either. When someone gets an advantage over other with equipment like that, ranked battles are more equipment vs equipment than skill vs skill. Another blatant example of this is gold ammo. This is just taking the same concept even further.)

An advantage is an advantage. There’s just no sugarcoating it. And to be honest, it’s not even irrelevant. The better player you are, the more you are able to squeeze out of that 0.15 seconds that you have.

Yes, you are able to get bonds from random battles in the future – but it’s via specials or missions. So there will be this arms race for the better equipment, basically, and spending your time and credits on ranked battles will help you with that endeavour quite a bit.

Bringing these “advantage-over-others”-type of equipment to the game is as idiotic as giving an OP tank as a reward for a game mode (looking at you, T-22). It’s basically the same thing on principle. Everyone wants it because, well, it’s better than anything else out there.

I don’t disagree with what you are saying. All I’m saying is that it’s not as bad as some people are making out.

People with 600 wn8 who can’t play anyway and they really think that the 0.15 second reload (for example) is go n a make them so much better.

People seem to think that suddenly they won’t be able to play the game at all.

With absolute perfect games and stats in ranked battles a player will get enough bonds to buy 1 improved equipment per month. That’s 12 equipment per year.

Not only that but it is a maximum of 15% of the best players who will get that much.

And again. The improvement in most cases is minute and very rarely enough to change the outcome of a battle or brawl.

But as you said. An advantage is an advantage. Simply being better is not good game design.

However in the department of simply being flat out better there is a thousand times worse things already in game in the form of gold ammo and retardedly OP tanks that can smash anything their tier with ease (is-3 for example).

Can’t reply to your message Havoc199, so I’ll do it on my previous reply instead.

You are very right about the gold and OP vehicles. Gold alone is more “poisonous” to skill based gaming than the enhanced equipment, that is true. However, gold is available to “everyone” with relatively reasonable time/credit ratio, which does not really give an advantage over some restricted group of people.

I also think that most people are not saying that they won’t be able to play the game at all – it’s just that not playing the game after stupid moves like that is the best way to protest against it. So they don’t want to play the game. At all. Which is what I am also doing at the moment.

The sole reason they introduced those rewards is to get people play the game mode and I really, *reaaally* oppose that. It’s just wrong on so many levels. Good players are forced to play and put their credits/time into it if they want to stay competitive with the latest equipment (CW, tournaments, strongholds). The not-so-good players will just feel left out and get pissed off because the good players will have yet another unfair advantage over them. If one beats other fair and square being a better player… It’s easier to take in than one doing so with boosted equipment. Of course people will get pissed, you don’t need a bloody PhD degree to come up with that conclusion.

Sorry about the rant again, I just can’t understand the developers and/or their mindset. How is this a good deal for anyone in the long run?

And don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of ranked battles. And I am itching to participate. The only thing keeping me back is the way they are driving people to play it. It probably doesn’t mean jack s**t to WG whether I play or not, but I hope enough people take the same stance.

(Disclaimer: As I’ve stated before: I most likely would have no problems faring well in the ranked battles. And I would get my equipment. So no, this is not “a tomato rant”. I’m taking a stand on a game that I love and that’s going downhill *fast*, hoping they would take some corrective actions. At least they did so with the turret lock/free look -idiocity.)

I see 13v13 every day, always as t8-10 games where there are still 3 t10s, at the expense of the t8-9s, who face a higher percentage of t10s total therefore.
Yes, I’m sure NA West’s low population has something to do with it. But the Mm clearly is unwilling to make single tier or two tier battles now. I’ve waited for *5 minutes* for battle with tier 10s, while the wait for t5-9 is still 10 seconds or less. The MM needs fixing for low server population. We’re not actually short, dangit.

as always wot player will bitch and moan about everything, while blaming WG.

improved equipment and directives are Consumables, meaning the effect is lost after you use them once. so to continue to spam them you’ll have to continue to play ranked, i dont see them being that viable in randoms.

they give every player 100 bonds from start so you can try them yourself.

Stop spouting nonsense and get your facts straight. And you people who “like” this, I suggest you do the same.

Improved equipment are *NOT* consumables. The effect is *NOT* lost after you use them once. How did you even get to that conclusion is beyond my comprehension. The only thing that works that way are the directives.

Improved equipment work just like normal equipment, except that they are better in every way.

And no, this is not a “bitching and moaning about everything”-case. This time it’s different. I, for one, have not “bitched and moaned” about anything up until this point. As to why it is different – there’s just so darn many reasons for that. The main point being bad game design. Rubicon 2.0. Et cetera. Look up my post on the WG forums and read the thread if you want more details.

“Tier X tanks are like Ferraris in the garage. You probably won’t want to purchase something like that, because your lower tier does better for you.”

The reason why people don’t play their T10s much is not that they’re boring or lower tiers do everything better. It’s that playing T10s is fucking expensive. Does ranked change that? Hell no. On the contrary, at some point you need to start shooting gold to get the higher rank so in the end you spend even more than in random. Huge hit and miss, WG.

Exactly this. If you lose a game, you won’t make a dime most of the times. If you encounter a Maus or Type 5, you won’t make a dime most of the times. Also a lot of tier 9’s are real creditsinks, like the T-54.

TOTAL for a week with the new Tournaments 2.0 – 240+400 = 640 players take gold !!!!!!!

486 May #4 Tier 8 (24 may) – 620 teams – 104 groups first 3 teams in groups take gold ==> 104 x3 = 312 teams x3 tournaments (tier 4,6,8)=936 teamsx3 players = 2808 players. This is only from 3 tournaments but we had also 5vs5, 7vs7 and 1vs1 having this in mind for sure the number is much higher !

OLD format 486 = 3000+ players would take gold

Now please correct me!

How is this better ? Is this your strategy to get more players to play the game? Is the same person that created the OP tanks like maus , type 5 or chrysler gf responsible for the tournaments 2.0 ?

i agree the goldspam is real over 5 matches i had 3 tanks over all tank shooting at me that did not fire gold it was absolutely retarded and no i didnt drive in a type 5 heavy or a maus but a skoda t50/51 it was litterally gold everywhere

I’m really not sure about the bonds and equipments either, but I think, the game mode would just die without a reward on this level. WG knows this. They don’t want a bigger gap between great and bad, they want a succesful (endgame) game mode.

The reward have to be connected with the random battles. Have to be a huge motivation to mobilize the necessary player base.
– Only cosmetics? Definitely not! Just be honest. (Most of the player would just play the easier mm and cheaper randoms in those hours too.)
– Good amount of gold (or tokens or whatever)? Maybe, but probably still not enough.

– “Bonds” only usable on T8+ tanks in every game mode? I’m expecting something like this.

The problem is this. All of the people who do well and earn a lot of bonds will buy many directives and improved equipment. But do you think they will put them on their tier 10’s to get better ranks in ranked battles ? F**k in the hell NO. You know what they will do ? Put all their directives and improved equipment on low tiers ! Put them on their pz 1 c, pz 2 J, Matilda , Pz b2, t67 and even on their tier 1 tanks. Just to be able to sealclub the new players. This pretty much destroys the newer players and scared them from playing the game further, which lowers the player base and leads to the decline of the game

And well, you know, it’s not really kosher even if you could only use them in ranked battles.

Why? Well. What is the point of ranked battles and ranks in general if it’s about equipment and gold and not about skill? As if the gold spam wasn’t enough, WG decides to introduce equipment that is difficult to aquire to make it actually easier for the ones who rank on top first to do so in the future as well.

After they do that, they may then proceed to place those excess superequipments on their sealclubbing tanks.

Do you really think that the serious players that are able to get their hands on that equipment will install them on a T67 or another sealclubber? They don’t need that. If they are already sealclubbing, their experience and skill is already enough to make a difference. That equipment won’t make a difference.

The more serious players play in clans. They’d rather put that equipment on their Tier 10 clanwars/stronghold tanks.